KEEP AWAY

Ever since state Sen. Thurman G. Adams Jr. became the
president pro tem in 2003, there has been no doubt where
the power resided in the Delaware Senate.

Adams, a Bridgeville Democrat, has counted on the
unflagging support of three caucus mates, downstaters
like himself, and consolidated their collective control
by giving them influential posts.

Majority leaders have come and gone, majority whips
have been treated like interchangeable parts, all
buzzing like electrons around the true nucleus of the
caucus -- which is Adams along with Sen. Nancy W. Cook
of Kenton, Sen. Robert L. Venables Sr. of Laurel, and
Sen. James T. Vaughn Sr. of Clayton. Not even Vaughn's
session-long absence from the after-effects of cancer
and pneumonia has diluted their shared strength.

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner must have looked into the future
when she was a Democratic state senator. She left. It
was going to be easier to get to be the governor than to
crack into power in that caucus.

Nothing occurs in Legislative Hall without this
foursome. Adams runs the Senate Executive Committee in
charge of the governor's nominations. Cook handles the
budget as the co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee.
Venables oversees construction projects as the co-chair
of the Bond Bill Committee. Vaughn has the courts in his
sights as the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They are throwbacks, elected in the 1970s or 1980s,
keeping the Senate the last stubborn base of the
old-fashioned conservative Democrats from Kent County
and Sussex County, dominant in state politics until the
suburban explosion in New Castle County in the 1960s
began their eclipse.

They believe the purpose of power is to be used. It
means they are comfortable functioning as a political
black hole. Once again they have sucked away a gay
rights bill.

The legislation, first introduced by state Rep.
William A. Oberle Jr., a Republican from a district
south of Newark, would ban discrimination based on
sexual orientation in employment, housing, public places
like restaurants and hotels, insurance and other
contracts.

This is Delaware. The conflict has not broken along
party lines but along the enduring divide between
upstate and downstate, a key exception being state Sen.
George H. Bunting Jr. and state Rep. Peter C.
Schwartzkopf, downstate Democrats who represent a robust
gay constituency in Rehoboth Beach.

Various versions of the gay rights bill have been
approved by the state House of Representatives. It had
perhaps its most triumphant moment when Minner stood on
the steps inside Legislative Hall in 2003 and endorsed
it, saying, "What makes us strong as a nation is our
willingness to allow people to live as they choose."

Session after session, the measure has been stymied
in the Senate as Adams, Venables, Vaughn and now Cook
have played a master game of Keep Away.

In one earlier incarnation, Adams assigned the bill
to the Small Business Committee, where Venables as the
chair refused to let it come before the Senate for
consideration. In another, it went into Vaughn's
Judiciary Committee for another round of the silent
treatment.

When the latest version was introduced as Senate Bill
141 last week, Adams sent it to the Insurance &
Elections Committee, chaired by state Sen. Patricia M.
Blevins, the Democratic majority whip from Elsmere.
Blevins is a friend of the bill, and she quickly
scheduled a hearing for it Wednesday as a prelude to
getting it to the floor.

There were whispers that Adams had made a mistake,
not recognizing the bill in its newest form and
assigning it to Blevins' committee by accident.

"We'll see if it's a mistake," Adams said with a
smile.

Adams had Cook to cover for him. She sits on the
Insurance & Elections Committee.

While a committee chair single-handedly can stop
legislation, it takes a majority of the committee
members to sign out a bill for Senate debate -- in this
case, four of the six members.

Among the Democrats on the committee, Blevins was for
it, as were Sen. David P. Sokola, the prime sponsor from
Pike Creek Valley, and Sen. Harris B. McDowell III from
Wilmington. On the Republican side, neither Sen. Charles
P. Copeland, the minority leader from Greenville, nor
Sen. John C. Still III from Dover were willing to sign
it out, saying it would burden small-business owners,
which they both are -- Copeland with a printing company
and Still with an insurance agency.

That left Cook. "I will not be [signing out the
bill.] I feel the majority of my constituents oppose the
legislation, and I've been elected to serve them," she
said.

The tactic of Keep Away worked again. It did not
matter that the governor wanted the bill. It did not
matter that there was a majority of at least 12 senators
from both parties ready to vote "yes" in the 21-member
chamber if the bill was brought up for consideration,
according to a tally provided by the Delaware Liberty
Fund, a gay political organization.

It did not matter that the House was poised to pass
the measure again. It did not matter that the 24
speakers, not counting legislators, testifying at
Blevins' committee hearing broke 3-1 in its favor.

Time matters, though, and the backers of the
gay-rights bill say it is on their side. If not now,
soon.

Blevins sensed it in the lopsidedness of the
testimony. "The opposition is fading, and people
recognize that the bill will be reality. We're closer
and closer," she said.

It could be seen in the presence of the statewide
officeholders who attended the committee hearing with an
eye to the future. Lt. Gov. John C. Carney Jr. and
Treasurer Jack A. Markell, rivals for the Democratic
nomination for governor, called for enactment, as did
Insurance Commissioner Matthew P. Denn, a Democrat
running for lieutenant governor. Wilmington Council
President Theodore Blunt, another Democratic candidate
for lieutenant governor, sent an e-mail in support.

Markell mentioned the tide of time as he quoted the
late Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican who
said, "It's time America realized that there was no gay
exemption in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness in the Declaration of Independence."

McDowell put it more simply than anyone. "The time
has come," he said.

It is not enough for time to come, though. It has to
pass by Adams, Cook and Venables, even if Vaughn has
taken a time-out. Still, they have been put on notice
that the wait is under way.

"I'll come back. I'll come back a wrinkled old
lesbian holding my grandchild," said Frann Anderson, a
Wilmington resident who spoke at the hearing to ask for
the bill to do what she did.